Little Falls transcript., 1887-03-04
'HlE( (.)W''l TO LEV /. y.
sverily, Oas lIan's MsGt IL Another Mans Poison

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From the Brooklyn Sunday Eagle.
The difference in the views even oil
physicians as to the best means OF
Keeping the clock work OF lifegoing are
almost as great as the original differ
ences in the time pieces themselves.
Some people think it necessary to eat
three or four meals day iii order to
keep their lives agoing, while others
declare that the chief destroyer of life
and health is food itself. When a
sleek, well-fed man called on Aberne-
thy and complained Of general break
up in health, the quaint old Esculapius
said: "Give up your dinners; live on
sixpence a day and earn it,
The ancients were, generally con-
tent with two square meals a
day, the prandium and the cnna,
and many modern philosophers have
found that they feel much lighter and
more comfortable when they eat only
twice in twenty-four hours Others,
on the contrary, both physicians
and laymen, whenever they see a per
son in weak health recommend more
food, and when the dyspeptic answers
that tough Chicago beef, such as
Brooklyn is now rejoicing in, does not
'slt easy on his bosom's lord, 1.-THE
stomach-enrreat him or her to take
more nourishment, such as jelly every
five minutes, beef tea every hour, oys-
ters before going to bed, and port
wine whAnever faint feeling comes
upon them. Sir Robert Peel, before
he made any great effort in the
English house OF commons, used
to eat a big, rare, rump steak with
bottle of port. Pitt and Fox used
to take two bottles of the same
seductive fluid, and so. did Lord Chan
cellor Eden every night of his life for
fifty years. One man thinks boxing
will keep him strong; another, rowing;
third, walking so many miles every
day without any object; fourth, 60
ing to bed at a particular hour every
night; q fifth. oatmeal every morning;
a sixth, bathing every day, and so
forth. Physical exertion is no doubt,
one of the greatest preservatives OF
life and health, but when overdone it
has killed thous ands Of strong men
by heart disease, consumption, apo
plexy or paralysis. Mr.. Gladstone
has recruited his. strength for many
years Telling trees, and his diet is very
simple, q little fish, some bread and
cheese and half a pint bitter ale often
serving him for a dinner at his clubaft-
er a hard days work. Other brain
workers, like Archbishop WhateIy,
have had enormous appetites and
been equal to three ordinary
men at a dinner table. Pure
air and water have a great deal to do
with longevity, so much so that in the
land, the average age of those who
died during q recent very severe win
ter Was above eighty6ve years.
Some sanitarians are always say
ing, ''Take a rest; let your mind lie
fallow; don't work SO much" and
seem to think that brain work espe-
cially is q constant drain upon ones
vital capital Others, l believe more
truly, look upon idleness as the real
"thief of time," and point to thegreat
workers who have lived to a grand
old age. Mathematicians claim that
even the absorbing mental process of
working out difficult problems is con-
ductive to longevity. Liebnitz, they
tell us, lived his seventy years, Euhle
his seventysiN, Lagrange his seventy
seven, Ilapiace his seventy eight
years, while Sir Isaac Newton died at
eighty-ive, Plato at eighty-two,
Archemedes at seventy-five, and the
somewhat mythical Pyciagoras at
ninety. Some of these ancients, how
ever. were not eminent ma;hemati-
clans, but may be c]assed as general
philosophers, natural or metaphysi-
cal. Poets do not alway die before
their time, as Keats and Byron and
Arthur Hugh C|ou,h did. On the con-
trary, the much abused Tennyson,
whom have seen drinking "hearty"
at the crystal palace, Syndenham, Of
that great natural English institution,
bitter pale ale, will survive, l pro-
phesy, all the terrible criticisms on his
conservatism, which have been made
about his last poem, and perhaps
most severely by the ex-Prjme Minis
ter Gladstone, who conferred his earl
dom upon him.